king there with another war correspondent and an Australian
officer who at a great pace led us round about, amid 5.9's, and
debouched a little to see one of our ammunition-dumps exploding like a
Brock's Benefit, and chattered brightly under "woolly bears" which made
a rending tumult above our heads. I think he enjoyed his afternoon out
from staff-work in the headquarters huts. Afterward I was told that he
was mad, but I think he was only brave. I hated those hours, but put
on the mask that royalty wears when it takes an intelligent interest in
factory-work.

The streams of wounded poured down into the casualty clearing stations
day by day, week by week, and I saw the crowded Butchers' Shops of war,
where busy surgeons lopped at limbs and plugged men's wounds.

Yet in those days, as before and afterward, as at the beginning and
as at the end, the spirits of British soldiers kept high unless their
bodies were laid low. Between battles they enjoyed their spells of rest
behind the lines. In that early summer of '17 there was laughter in
Arras, lots of fun in spite of high velocities, the music of massed
pipers and brass bands, jolly comradeship in billets with paneled walls
upon which perhaps Robespierre's shadow had fallen in the candle-light
before the Revolution, when he was the good young man of Arras.

As a guest of the Gordons, of the 15th Division, I listened to the
pipers who marched round the table and stood behind the colonel's chair
and mine, and played the martial music of Scotland, until something
seemed to break in my soul and my ear-drums. I introduced a French
friend to the mess, and as a guest of honor he sat next to the colonel,
and the eight pipers played behind his chair. He went pale, deadly
white, and presently swooned off his chair... and the Gordons thought it
the finest tribute to their pipes!

The officers danced reels in stocking feet with challenging cries,
Gaelic exhortations, with fine grace and passion, though they were
tangled sometimes in the maze... many of them fell in the fields outside
or in the bogs of Flanders.

On the western side of Arras there were field sports by London men,
and Surreys, Buffs, Sussex, Norfolks, Suffolks, and Devons. They played
cricket between their turns in the line, lived in the sunshine of the
day, and did not look forward to the morrow. At such times one found no
trace of war's agony in their faces or their eyes nor in the quality of
their laughter.

My